


To Know Terror

by Nova (Ars_Nova)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ars_Nova/pseuds/Nova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nigh-omniscience is, above all else, tedious. He has ample time to reminisce.</p><p>(Warning: Suggestive of some pretty dark stuff. Nothing overt but I may still have to bump up the rating.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Know Terror

**Author's Note:**

> (Revised 5-26-2014)

He's fucked up the world. Normally a good host oughtn't be so crude, but these words are deliberate. He's fucked it all up, and if he could smile, and if only he had ears—He'd be grinning from one to the other.

His mind—what we must call a mind, for convenience—flies back to the beginning. A bare gray planet in starless space. At a distance it's like a coin, dull and sparsely carved. He raises his hand, frames the coin between his thumb and forefinger, and flips it (spins himself). Eons pass as it turns (he revolves). Specks of life emerge: scattered bacteria, bulbous plants and trees in every color of the rainbow. The gray fills in with warts of color.

After many revolutions he halts the coin (himself) when its dark side faces him (he faces it). With his free hand he reaches, somewhere to his left. _Nothing_ squirms at his touch, wriggles over his fingers. He clenches it, and pulls. There is tugging, ripping, snapping and flailing. A shadow furls around his hand; slime coats his glove. Without moving, the planet is beneath him now (he is above it). He holds out the gruesome _nothing_ with both hands, then drops it. It spirals slowly towards the planet like a ribbon. It creeps over the surface. Even from far away he sees its smoky tendrils take on form and dimension, tracing the cracks and folds, penetrating, ingraining itself. Darkening caverns, filling forests with bramble. The whole of Alternia seems to tremble. The now- _something_ sinks deeper, vanishing beneath the water, making bed at its depths.

His mind begins to skip forward. Specks of life become dots; dots, blotches. Little, frumpy, sharp-fanged blotches with coal hair and gravel throats. They subdue their world, chart it out and build upon it. And in time they find the fucked-up _something_ sleeping deep below... and when they find it, it finds them. It subdues them. It becomes mother, master, and executioner; no child is born without knowing it, no adult claims their wealth without paying it tribute, and no sinner can escape its deafening bellow. They give it a name like the last gasp for air before one begins to drown, and they worship it, even as it scars and embitters them. It fills their heads with whispers, their dreams with visions of blackness coiling around them, tearing through their pale flesh; there is never silence, never rest.

That madness, that miserable white noise, breaks them; but in time, they mend. The sweet, terrible _nothing_ s in their ears, the tender, creeping _something_ s in their nightmares—Where once these things made them frail and nervous, now they are rendered vicious and alert. Their eyelids grow dark and heavy, but they clench their teeth and press on. The pain only makes them angry. They are miserable, ruined. Powerful. Fearsome. It is not sheer force that makes them strong, but lying with the beast; learning to love and loathe it, to regard it with terror and reverence. He watches them grow like jagged, filthy weeds, and he knows his contract has been fulfilled. To the letter, as always. They will win this time.

And now his mind returns, to the best approximation of the "present" we could hope for. He sits at a table, fiddling with a chess game. The Kings and Queens are absent. Black and white pieces are scattered unevenly, in patterns that suggest either random chaos or poor play. Absentmindedly he moves all the pieces to the wrong places: Pawns across the board, Bishops in cardinal lines. No limits. No perspective. No purpose. A thin, wiry huff reverberates from his hollow skull.

"I will give you purpose."

His typewriter clacks. A protégé seeks audience with him. Once more, he wishes he could smile.

"I will fuck you up."


End file.
